OpenApple: Signs Point to AirPort Updates

The ThinkSecret team examines Apple's recent Macbook update, and predicts that Apple's next move will be to refresh its AirPort wireless products.

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Since the last installment of OpenApple two weeks ago, Apple has taken the wraps off two new products, both of which Think Secret had previously been tracking.

The first, and arguably less interesting of the two, was the RED iPod nano, a special edition music player sheathed in a bright red anodized aluminum skin that sees a portion of its sales donated to The Global Fund AIDS charity. The second product appeared earlier this week: Apple's long-awaited update to its MacBook Pro line of laptops, which now features Intel's Core 2 Duo "Merom" processor.

With the MacBook Pro revisionwhich was noted as forthcoming in this column in late
August and early
SeptemberApple gave its high-end customers what they needed, but not necessarily all that they wanted. For a 10-month-old laptop line that had gone untouched since its debut in January, the update seems rather
paltry: faster Core 2 Duo processors (in fact, Apple is the first to offer Core 2 Duo chips at 2.33GHz), faster SuperDrives, and larger hard drives.

The return of a FireWire 800 port to the laptops can also be seen as an improvement, but only because Apple mysteriously removed it from the first MacBook Pros after more than three years of featuring it on high-end PowerBook G4 systems.

Other specifications, including price, went unchanged. Accordingly, this week's upgrade means that new MacBook Pro owners can feel better about their purchase today when matched against Apple's lower-end MacBook, which still features just a Core Duo processor.

But despite the update, the MacBook Pro still lags behind in value compared to Apple's other offerings, not to mention equivalent notebooks from its PC competitors. Case in point: a Dell laptop equipped similarly to Apple's entry-level $1,999 MacBook Pro runs about $400 less, while a Dell system similar to the high-end $2,799 MacBook Pro can be had for a savings of about $600. Granted, the comparison is apples-to-oranges at best, but it demonstrates that Apple is content at keeping a substantial, $500 price gap between the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines even at the expense of perceived value.

For Apple aficionados, however, component price competitiveness has never been the most important factor, at least not when considering Apple's other unique strengths, such as industrial design. But Apple decided not to touch the MacBook Pro's exoskeleton, placing the laptop in the same aluminum digs that are now in their fourth year of defining Apple's high-end laptopscertainly a minor letdown even for those power users craving the performance of the new Core 2 Duo chip.

With the release of the upgraded MacBook Pro, Apple's Mac line-up is now where it will stand going into the holiday season and into early next year. While information is not available from sources at this point regarding the Mac maker's future high-end laptop ambitions, this week's relatively minor update, announced in only a quiet press release, suggests that the time to the next notebook upgrade will be less than the ten months customers just finished waiting between models.

Looking to the nearer future, it is widely believed that Apple will refresh at least some of its AirPort wireless networking products and its external iSight webcam in the coming weeks. Apple ran into issues with both devices in Europe for not being RoHS-compliant and had to pull them from shelves on that continent to comply with newly enforced European Union environmental standards.

It is not clear at this point whether the revised units will boast anything more substantial than RoHS compliance, although a revision to Apple's AirPort Base Station is long overdue. With the exception of a small price cut, Apple has not touched its 802.11b/g AirPort Extreme Base Station since its debut in January 2003, despite vastly more aggressive pricing from competitors. At the same time, Apple has yet to outfit the Base Station with AirTunes music streaming capabilities, which are included on the cheaper $129 AirPort Express.

It would not be surprising to see Apple roll out a new line of AirPort products that include support for the draft specification of the faster 802.11n wireless networking protocol. Apple's iTV product, slated to debut in January, is widely expected to employ 802.11n to attain the bandwidth needed for a consistent video streaming experience. In addition, when Apple recently upgraded its iMac line with Core 2 Duo processors, the company also quietly switched wireless networking cards, adding one that supports the draft specification of 802.11n, although that protocol is disabled by software and the card only functions in 802.11b/g mode.

While a final 802.11n specification is not expected until early 2008, Apple has previously led the adoption of new wireless networking standards. Major PC vendors have yet to jump on board the draft 802.11n specification, but several third-party vendors have offered routers and cards since earlier this year.

Nick DePlume and the ThinkSecret staff cover Apple, the Macintosh, and related software with a mixture of news and other inside information. Check them out athttp://www.thinksecret.com.

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